A Short Story

During World War II my father had been stationed as a sergeant in the then British colony of Ceylon. It would have made a deep impression on him for when I was growing up he spoke about it at dinner for 20 years. So one day I decided to visit the island myself and see if he was telling the truth.

The Airport is well lit, and the highway from the airport to the capital Colombo about 30 Km away has many interesting buildings quite close to each other, though quite different from buildings in a suburban area in the west. They are rarely over two stories high and have the same flat design, and have the name board prominently displayed, almost all painted in a light beige color.

Colombo borders the sea and its port is one of the busiest in Asia. Almost all the major Hotels are around the Galle Face area which is a large empty ground bordering the Indian Ocean.

After a week in Colombo I decided to go to Matara which is in the southern tip of the Island and is about 170 Km south of Colombo. The road south runs parallel to the sea and this stretch of road filled with palm trees and fisherman’s huts is among the really enjoyable roads to travel on.

Along the way there are Toddy Tapers whose only job is to climb coconut trees and cut the flowering stem and tie a clay pot to it, after a few days the sap from the stem gets fermented and it becomes liquor which has a delightful unworldly taste to it. At Matara we stayed at a rest house which although not hygienic served the best food we ever had.

Although I do not have a degree in psychology I have a strange habit of analyzing the people in every country I go to, so I would do the same here. Sri Lankans in general are intelligent and friendly and not proud. And here unlike in the west there are different degrees of honesty, so when selecting a public official people look for the ideal combination of ability to do the job with the maximum possible degree of honesty, for it’s difficult to find an honest person who is also good at their job.

But for an intelligent people they do not think deeply about some things that trouble at least a small minority in the west, like for example: how was the universe created? Are there things smaller than atoms? Are we related to monkeys? This kind of thinking is absent even among University professors who are qualified to answer these questions. But even here there is an extremely small minority of people who think of such things, but unfortunately it’s so rare that you could spend an entire life time without meeting one.

But I did meet such a person in the island and he was the clerk in the guest house. “Aren’t you Carl Stanton the famous astronomer, and the world authority on supernovas” said he. “Yes” said I a little surprised that someone here knew me. “I’ve been reading the articles you write, it’s interesting and I have used your observations to verify my theories, theories that I think solve all the problems of the universe, including how it was created, and I have written it down in this paper, it would only take a few minutes to read, can you tell me whether it is correct” said he.

I present below his paper exactly as he wrote it without any modification by me:

An atom is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. These are made up of even smaller particles like muons, pions, hyperons, Higgs bosons, baryons etc. So far about 150 such particles have been identified. These particles are fleeting and have a tendency to move incredibly swiftly. The movement of these tiny particles moves electrons, atoms, aero planes, stars, galaxies and everything else in the universe.

These tiny particles and their ability to move is the only reality in the universe and other things such as Time, Space, Energy or Creation are not real and are how the mind perceives the movement of these particles. Collectively these particles make what we normally call Matter.

According to this theory there is nothing called space, three dimensional or otherwise, for when these particles move, as they always do it creates this illusion. There is nothing to fill, for there is nothing.

Similarly there is no fourth dimension called Time, this is what the mind perceives when these particles move, but it isn't real, for there isn't anything separate called Time. If there is nothing called Time then the universe could not have been created at a particular point in time in the past, this solves the mystery of creation. These particles would have always been and will always be.

Another way of looking at it would be to imagine that every single particle in the universe stops moving, at this point Time is said to have stopped. So there wouldn’t be Time but there would still be particles (although not moving). This clearly shows particles (matter) are the reality, while time is an illusion.

Two sets of laws try to explain the Universe. Einstein’s theory of relativity for the larger world, and quantum physics for the exceedingly small. Einstein’s Theory does not work at the exceedingly small level because it differentiates between matter and energy, but energy is really extremely small particles of matter which move in different ways. This explains why Light behaves as both a particle and a wave.

If you convert all Matter in the Universe, and also all the Energy in it, into a cube of water at 30 degrees Celsius, the size of the cube would have always been the same. This constant would be the Universal constant of the Universe.

So how does this explain Singularity, or what is popularly known as the Big Bang. If matter were to loose it’s ability to move, it would converge to a point infinitely small, but soon the deep tendency to move would lead it to expand outward, which would eventually form Stars, planets, Galaxy’s and everything else that is in the Universe.

So how does this explain Gravitation? It has been found that when a sub atomic particle was moved another particle which was seven miles away moved in exactly the same way, and it has been estimated that however far these particles are separated they would move exactly in the same way. This is strange for nothing moves faster than the speed of Light. This twin movement could be used to explain Gravitation, for if a particle were to move, its twin particle would move towards it.

Note by the author: It is said that a simple law governs the universe, could it be this?

Written by: RJX